Re: Destined Union (Jenna)
The look on the Griffin’s face told Jenna just about what he thought of her dream. It was an almost worried look. The kind of look you might give someone who was stark raving mad and who might, at any moment, do something terribly unfortunate… He basically said as much as he leaned on his sheath, looking at her carefully. Still, he called her by name. That counted for something, right?
The lizardgirl listened carefully to what he said next, thinking over her response. She could understand his skepticism, in a way. She wasn’t quite sure how what she was saying was true. To be frank, it did sound ludicrous. But it really was true, and she knew it. She could feel it. There had to be some logic to it, something to convince him! It took her a while to figure it out, but by the time he had asked her if she understood the gulf between them, she had hit upon something that at least made sense to her.
"I’m not insane, and I’m not that dangerous. I’m idealistic, maybe more than normal, but I’m not insane! The angel specifically mentioned a man called ‘the Griffin,’ a swordsman who was a leader of men. I’m not stupid, humans don’t come here often. A group of soldiers, this far from any human settlement? It’s almost unheard of around here. You’re really telling me that I’ve just gone mad and that my mind has fabricated a dream that fits with reality so perfectly?" It was her turn to look at him as if he were crazy, for doubting something that seemed so obvious. "As for why an angel would tell me this… I don’t know that. All I know is that even angels aren’t exempt from the whims of Fate, much less us. All of these things have conspired to bring the two of us together, here and now. We can’t just shrug it off as coincidence and go on as if nothing is happening. That would be too easy. Too comfortable. We have to face what Fate has decided for us."
Jenna furrowed her brow, frowning as she tried to find the words to address the latter half of his comments. "Yes, you’re right about one thing. Our races have been enemies since the beginning. But that doesn’t make it the right way, and it doesn’t make it inevitable or permanent! The Demon Lord granted us intelligence to better equip us to fight, yes, but that also gave us the ability to reason. To see a better way! There will always be conflict, because there will always be differences of opinion and interests. There’s conflict between monsters. There’s conflict between humans. But you wouldn’t say that any one group of humans must, by necessity, hate another. They can reconcile their differences, and if not live together, accept that the other should be allowed their own ways. It can be like that between our kinds! We and our kin will have to learn at least to accept one another, and to rally together against the evil that exists in this world. Otherwise things will continue on as they always have. Hatred and pain and death that could all be avoided. I’ve seen it do horrible things. We can’t let that go on and still claim to be civilized beings" she said, sometimes quietly, other times with a loud passion in her voice.
And there it was, her crazy idealism, built up around the more traditional values she held, like honor and reverence and communal pride. It was perhaps quite heterodox. But it was what she had come to believe over the course of her quiet contemplation alone in her cave. It was also built around her perspective on her parents’ marriage. Though her mother was something of an authoritarian with her husband just as with her daughters, the two of them loved each other very much, and there had always been something magical about that to Jenna. It wasn’t true of all couples in the grand hollow, though there were many for whom it was. She had always thought that those others were missing out on one of the most important things in life. Her parents seemed so happy together, to strengthen each other just by their presence. She wanted that for herself, very much so. She wanted that for Gren too, and all of her kind, even if their priorities were… different. The lizardgirl couldn’t help but think that their way of looking at the world was nothing short of depressing.
"So yes, I do understand the difference between us now. But unlike you, I see a path to a future where that difference is smaller, where the two of us aren’t enemies by default. We can work towards that future. Together. And we can face down the evils that confront both of us" she said finally, a sort of tiredness to her voice. She was certain he would fight back against her words, and she wasn’t sure if she was up to the task of convincing him of her rightness, but she would try her damndest. It was all she could do.
